First land sheet put together!

Isn't it purdy?

   

  

  

Incidentally, the filter lands appear to be really hard to come by. Definitely the biggest challenge.

-Jed

Fate Reforged Pre-release

Deck Construction
3: Pine Walker, Cloudform, Yasova Dragonclaw, Write into Being, Frontier Mastodon, Glacial Stalker, Alpine Grizzly, Snowhorn Rider
4: Temur Sabertooth, Lotus Path Djinn, Shaman of the Great Hunt, Ugin's Construct
5: Feral Krushok, Fierce Invocation, Bear's Companion
6: Riverwheel Aerialists
7: Atarka, World Render

Winds of Qal Sisma, Savage Punch, Enhanced Awareness, Bathe in Dragonfire, Pyrotechnics

Lands Forest x7, Island x6, Mountain x 3, Swiftwater Cliffs, Frontier Bivouac (8 green, 8 blue, 5 red)

Key cards from Fate Reforged

           

Match 1

Facing Travis, who seems to know what he’s doing. I keep a two-lander with some good three drops while on the draw. He develops and I miss my land drops on turn 3 & 4. I get out Ysurva eventually with him having a morph and tapped out. I think I need to take some risks so I Bear Punch the morph and he reveals…

Ruth. That’s what they call a blowout my friends. I thought about this decision a lot and I stand by it. If it was 3x KTK I wouldn't have risked it because the board state was dire but not that dire but only 1 seeded pack? Bah.

I take my revenge in game two, getting the ridiculous combination of Ysura and the Shaman. He briefly stabilizes with a Mer-Ek nightblade who I can steal but ironically not attack with to give him more +1 counters. But his life total goes 21-13-1-Dead.

Game three is heroic. Villain gets some manascrew but drops two Sultai Banners so he DOES have cards he can play. Ysura makes a third appearance and I drive him down to 1. I make a CRITICAL error the one time I steal his Mer-Ek nightblade I didn’t attack. I didn’t want to give a free +1/+1… but that only happens if I also have the Shaman. So yeah, he stabilizes and starts building his board. All of my outs arrive one turn late. I stick a dragon and he has removal. I cast Cloudform (where’s your removal now Heinrich!) and he gets his mythic 3/5 flier. Now I need ANY of my removal to fly in but he gets a Mastodon (that’s 10 points of damage). I tap out to furiously draw cards, get my Bear Punch… and he cracks me down in one go. Great game, tough beat but a memorable one. Beats a durdly game with mana screw.

 

(1-2)

Match 2

To the loser’s bracket! Facing off against a genial player named Colin running Mardu. Both of us curve out nicely and develop the board. I actually live the dream and manifest the 5/4 vanilla. He still ended up dying, but took two cards to do so. I take the first game handily but on the second game he Mardu’s it up with a 2-3-4-5 drop complete with the ridiculous token-mover guy. I almost stabilized but I made some misplays early and should have traded off and didn’t. Boo.

Rubber match is a fun one. I land a vicious 3-4 punch of a Cloudform followed by Ugin’s Construct. No colored permanents in play so that is that.

 

(2-1)

Match 3

Round 3 (getting a little hungry now, missed tacos due to pouring rain) against Debs. A very slow thoughtful player, it’s hard for me not to get impatient and not think about my plays. In the first game we both hit our mana drops and I was faced with my first tough call. She attacked her Cloudform into my Lotus Path Djinn with four mana up. I’m tapped out and can’t trigger prowess in any way. I don’t block. Unfortunately she continues to develop, buffing her manifest with a runemark and gets out of control quickly. She also lands one of the 4/4 dragons and I pretty much crumble.

Game two is quick and dull: she doesn’t get any white mana so despite not having a three drop I am 

able to quickly gun her down. She DOES get out her 4/4 dragon again but too little, too late.

Game three starts out the same and once again on turn six her damn dragon comes out. I bear punch it down and what does she have?

 

I can’t believe she’s running that card. Yeah I don’t have a lot of answers for a 6/6 dragon. It gets runemarked and the game ends shortly thereafter. Oy.

(1-2)

Match 4

I don’t even want to talk about round 4. Rob kindly brought me a chicken and hummus pita and I’m facing off against yet another mardu deck. Game one: Executioner, Strike Leader, Rush of Battle. Well okay then!

  

Screw these guys.

 Game two is even more humiliating. He goldfished for five turns and I built a pretty good board state! Then he top decks

Ah yes, of course! The Mardu Wrath of God! The out comes his kill-squadron from above and I crumple quickly.

(0-2)

So what to learn from the pretty brutal defeat? It’s hard to learn too  much because the pre-release is about 60-70% Fate Reforged and drafting will only be 33%. My deck should have traded at least one of my 5 drops for a banner. The format was THAT slow and my bombs were THAT bomby. 

1*   Manifest is only a two-drop. That said, I really liked it in my deck with a high percentage of chunky vanilla creatures. Probably the best case scenario for that mechanic.

2*      The three-drop is a lot less crowded without all those damn morphs. I’m not saying Banners are suddenly playable but there seems to be a lot bigger playables than in KTK where rushing to 5 or 6 drop is more meaningful.

3*      Two color + splash  seems ideal. Welcome to the return of double-mana (Cloudform, Dragon etc.) that will pay dividends with a focus.

 4*   FR has almost none of those cheap walls (Archer's Parapet, Monastery Flock, &c) that grinds down KTK. I'm not sure what that means but I'm sure it means something.

The L is Silent - 00007

After a lengthy break for the festive period, Jed and Brent return with another podcast episode. We examine another double crack-a-pack of Khans of Tarkir, but this time look into the future and contemplate what drafting might look like after the release of Fate Reforged.

Which cards will be better and which will be worse? Can we envision a world where we don't pick Secret Plans? Who would want to? Find out in this week's ep.

• Subscribe to The L is Silent at http://feeds.feedburner.com/thelissilent-magicanotes
• Some sound effects and music courtesy of  freesfx.co.uk

12-Win Paladin Arena Deck: Goblins vs Gnomes Edition

It's been a while since I reported on a 12-win Arena deck, so when I put together my first full-value run since Goblins vs Gnomes dropped, I figured I should tell my readers all about it.

Oh yeah!

Picture a good Paladin deck. It probably has a pair of Consecrations and at least as many Truesilvers Champion. But this deck had none of either. Weird, right? The last 12-win Paladin run I wrote about was similar. It had a bunch of natural two-for-ones, only one Truesilver Champion and no Consecrations. This time, I got a tremendous tempo deck that provided bountiful two-for-ones, good stats for the mana, and actually not that many tricks.

Fate Reforged Preview Mechanics

mythicspoilers, my go-to for my cut-and-paste magic art needs, has a good selection up for Fate Reforged. I'm going to try avoid drooling over mythics and rares because of their limited impact on drafting. First we'll review some mini-trends

Allied Colors

 

Mono-colored creatures with bonuses granted if clan colors are active. Pretty damn good bonuses actually. These appear to be passing the vanilla test with flying colors so any deck with just one of the triggering colors would be more than happy to gobble them up.

Dis or dat

 

With apologies to You Don't Know Jack, we appear to have more mini-charms all over the place. Color me a fan: more choices = more entertaining and interesting game play.

Let's get to the new mechanics.

Bolster

 

Bolster is a new mechanic that grants counters to a creature of yours with the least toughness. I don't know what to think about this. Seems like a reasonably efficient way to spread counters around but it won't make a bigger guy into a spectacular threat. Will obviously work delightfully well with Outlast chieftans but that hardly constitutes an incredible insight.

Dash

Dash gives the option of a cheaper summon with haste but it returns to your hand at the end of the turn. Sort of a mini-ball lightning. I see it granting flexibility if you don't have a three-drop you can find something to do with your turn. All of the displayed Dash cards so far have a semi-sorcery ability so I see some Quadrant utility in the late game by helping it immediately break a stalemate rather than having to wait a turn for summoning sickness.

Manifest

 

Manifest allows any of your cards to be turned into a morph. SAY WHAT. Let's go step-by-step through the mechanics. Cards are Manifested off the library into 2/2 colorless creatures. If they are a creature, they can be morphed (or un-morphed depending on how you like your verbs) for its casting cost. If the card is anything else (land, spell, etc.) it stays as a 2/2, forever.

Some additional thoughts. In Khans, the morph cost is almost always less than the casting cast (barring some ridiculous triggered ability like Master of Pearls or my good ladyfriend, Kheru Spellsnatcher). So not only is the manifest (presumably) costing you a card but you're also having to pay a premium to flip it face up.

On a third hand, I think if you Manifest a Morph, you can still pay the cheaper morph cost.

The way Manifest works on Rageform fascinates me. It would be beyond sweet to actually land that on a creature but that is classic Best Case Scenario thinking. No I'm still not playing Taigam's Scheming but we could be looking at additional synergies on library manipulation. I see Manifest rewarding decks committing to a heavy creature presence. Or maybe...